


Flametender

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23690137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Ignis falls asleep with dreams of fire. When he wakes, he has still has embers to keep warm at his side.
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	Flametender

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TauriCXIV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TauriCXIV/gifts).



> A [prompt fill](https://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/615504080676290560/p-would-you-do-sensory-prompt-29-for-ignis-andor) for [tauriofthestorm](https://tauriofthestorm.tumblr.com/)!

When Ignis fell asleep, he smelled fire.

He could smell Insomnia burning, he was certain of it. He could taste the noxious fumes of gunpowder discharged on the wind. He could hear the roar of the airships, with their lights as red as the Crown City’s coals, smoldering in the night. He could feel the heat of the flames prickling across his skin, guttering from the city’s great skyscrapers like torches across the bay, flailing for aid that never came.

Ignis smelled Insomnia’s fall every time they refueled the car, and the gasoline tang painted the summer air. He smelled it in the sunlight that baked the yellow clay plateaus of Leide before the dust storms clotted his nose. He could even smell it on Noctis, scoring through the battlefield with the wrath of a thousand sundered souls seared along his swords.

When Ignis fell asleep, he felt sick with the feeling of smoke in his lungs. When he woke up in the morning, the smell of wood burning made him feel sick for a different reason.

“Damn,” he muttered, turning his phone back off and pretending he didn’t just see that traitorous time.

He’d overslept. He did not oversleep. Especially not now; not while they were on the road, everything was a mess, and everyone needed _him_ to make it through the morning. He needed to make coffee, sort through their ingredients, and figure out something for breakfast. He needed to take stock of their curatives, decide if they needed to swing into an outpost before taking up another bounty. There was too much to do, and he’d wasted his hours to do it just laying there with dreams of fire.

And if Noctis had his way, he’d be stuck laying there for hours more.

“Please don’t get up,” Noct sighed, voice cracked with sleep.

“They’re looking for food,” Ignis said by way of diplomacy. “If I’m not the one to feed them, who knows what they’ll go scrounging for.”

“Let ‘em.”

There was a finality to that statement which Ignis _should_ find it in him to argue with, but at the moment, he couldn’t muster up the strength. Not with Noct twined around his body, loose and sweet and enveloped around Ignis just as gently as his blanket. Beyond the slit of light between the flaps of their tent, Ignis could smell the campfire burning and hear Gladio’s deep voice lazily debating with Prompto over some benign, mid-morning decision making. Inside, it was quiet and warm, and Noct was soft against his side.

They were all tired, but none more so than Noct. He’d clung to Ignis these past few days more than he ever had in the time they’d been together. The tent felt too small for how closely Noct crushed himself against him at night, smothering his face in his chest so the others couldn’t hear it if he felt like crying. Motel rooms were becoming a mainstay, just so they could have a few hours of privacy for Ignis to tend to him like Noct needed him to.

Sometimes, he just needed to shove his face into a pillow and scream. Sometimes, Ignis just needed to sit next to him while he did, skating a hand along his back to let him know that he was still there. Sometimes, they both needed more than a good scream, and lay bare all their fears for them to share, then smother beneath the scratchy motel sheets.

Most times, Ignis knew that Noct just needed to feel like he was worth something to someone. Ignis could feel his hot desperation to please him in the thrum of his skin when the lights went out. He felt fire on his tongue when he kissed him, embers of his grief and his anger begging to be kindled by Ignis’ touch. Sometimes Noctis kissed him like he was on the verge of snuffing out, and he just needed Ignis to throw himself onto his pyre to keep him ablaze.

Most nights, when Ignis fell asleep smelling fire, it was with the sparks of it on his lips, as Noct’s body ignited underneath him. Every night, he tasted the wildfire of his devotion for him billowing through his breath.

This time, Noct just needed him to be still. He just needed him to be tinder for his coals to warm beneath, rather than an inferno to feed his blaze. Ignis could feel it in the way he shrunk against him, his shoulders curled up to his ears and knees coiled up against Ignis’ hip beneath the threadbare blankets. He just need a warm place to have fallen for a little while longer.

“Thanks, Specs,” Noctis breathed.

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You’re doing it.”

Ignis felt Noct’s whole body constrict around him, a wordless plea for him to stay. Ignis’ resolve against it was doomed the second he met Noct’s gaze, blinking up at him through the smoky clouds of sleep. How was he to deny the gentle glow of his warmth, radiating against him so softly? How was he to resist the velveteen tangle of his hair around his fingers, black as soot and just as chaotic?

Noct’s eyes flickered like blue pilot lights, hot and steady beneath the coal black cascade of his hair. As if Ignis needed any more coaxing, Noct tipped his face up to brand a kiss against Ignis’ lips. It was the barest lick of heat, just enough to leave a pleasant sear against his mouth, and Ignis felt like he had no choice but to let himself stay and smolder in his prince’s embrace.

“Very well then,” Ignis sighed, tightening an arm around Noct’s pent up shoulders and squeezing him close. “If those two end up poisoned by mushrooms as a result, you’ll only have yourself to blame.”

“Blame me then,” Noctis assented, passively.

Ignis held him a little tighter, hoping to drive out the weary dregs of Noct’s own self-loathing he sensed in that sleepy statement. Noctis made a small, drowsy noise, pleased by Ignis’ firm grasp, then nestled deeper into the circle of warmth it made for him.

Ignis absent-mindedly massaged circles against Noct’s shoulder, where his warm skin was bared by the slip of his shirt sleeve. Noctis purred beneath the idle treatment, his legs winding around Ignis’ thigh and squeezing in closer. Ignis let his face rest in Noct’s hair, inhaling the muzzy warmth of him, as familiar and comforting to Ignis as the tendrils of wood smoke, lilting from the safety of their campfire.

The rigid tension in Noct’s spine drained out once he was sure Ignis wouldn’t be going anywhere. Ignis tried to follow his example, releasing one long breath of his own. He’d just have to let his morning responsibilities go for an hour. Gladio was an adult – Prompto too, though perhaps to a lesser degree. They could fend for themselves if they needed to. And right now, they’d just have to.

He knew that they needed him, but Noct needed him more. Noct, who every day, Ignis feared might burn out if he didn’t tend the puttering sparks of his fire. He couldn’t throw too much fuel onto the starter, lest the flames go raging across Lucis, leaving nothing but ash in his wake. He couldn’t give too little kindling to cinders either, lest they lose their heat and fade away. Every flame needed someone to watch over it.

Fortunately, Ignis had gotten very good at building fires.


End file.
